Adobe Reader is a critical application in Wenatchee Schools enabling everyone to read and use forms that are created for district use and by other agencies. Keeping current with installed software ensures that your interaction with forms and documents are less prone to problems and errors.

Linked below are two documents explaining how to download and install your software for the Mac. The document "Adobe Installer Instructions (WSD)" is detailed in not just installing the Acrobat Reader App, but setting it as your default application handler for opening documents as well.

If you have any trouble downloading or installing the latest version of Adobe Reader, please submit a support ticket and your assigned building or department TSS_I (Technical Support Specialist) will assist you.

I wanted to make sure you aware of the Apple Learning Series on iTunes U which consist of fifteen courses that are self-paced tutorials designed to help educators learn foundational skills to effectively use Apple products and apps for teaching and learning. Each course provides basic skills coaching, tips, ideas for curriculum engagement, and skills practice.

Practice Tests for the Smarter Balanced next-generation assessment system will be available to everyone beginning tomorrow, May 29th. The Practice Tests will be freely available through a link on the Smarter Balanced website: http://www.smarterbalanced.org/practice-test/. No sign-up is needed. Once you click on the link you will be automatically signed in as a Guest. Click “Sign In” and then select the grade level of the test you wish to take (Grades 3-8 or 11), and thenselect the content area.

This is the initial release of Smarter Balanced Practice Tests aligned to the Common Core in grades 3-8 and 11 in English Language arts/literacy (ELA) and mathematics. Students, teachers, and parents nationwide will have access to sets of assessment questions aligned to the Common Core. The Practice Tests are intended to give students the experience of the next generation tests that will be operational in 2014-15. While the Practice Tests will provide a preview of the Smarter Balanced assessments, we want users to know that they will not encompass the full range of content that students may encounter on the operational assessments. As such, they should not be used to guide instructional decisions about students. Also, users should know that this early release of practice items will be presented in a “fixed form” (i.e., not computer adaptive) and that users will not receive reports or scores. Although the Practice Tests follow a fixed-form model, the operational assessment system will be computer adaptive.

Available nearly two years before the first administration of the summative assessment in the 2014-15 school year, the Practice Tests will help schools prepare for next-generation assessments. Development of the Smarter Balanced Assessment System will continue after the release of the Practice Tests and through summer 2014 in collaboration with member states and educators. By fall 2013, this initial version of the Practice Tests will be augmented with additional features, including:

Full array of performance tasks for mathematics (including classroom-based activities);

Classroom-based activities for ELA performance tasks in all grades;

Scoring rubrics for items requiring extended writing;

American Sign Language translation and other accommodation and accessibility tools.

The Practice Tests use Firefox, Chrome, or Safari browsers. A version for Internet Explorer will be available in the Fall. Please note that accommodations are available in some, but not all grade levels: in Math, accommodations are available in grades 3,7,11; in ELA accommodations are available in grades 4, 7, 11.

On behalf of the Consortium and OSPI assessment staff, I wish to express thanks to each of you who played a role in creating the success of the Pilot Test. It has been an unprecedented effort with 653,124 students participating in the Pilot Test across the Consortium. Data collected from the Pilot Test will be used to inform item writing, accessibility features, accommodations, and test administration decisions for the Field Test as we continuously improve the assessments many of you will place before students in the spring of 2015.

This month’s Teaching With Technology Tip focuses on lesson segments addressing content. Lesson segments addressing content are designed to help students effectively interact with new knowledge, practice and deepen their knowledge, and engage in complex cognitive tasks, such as generating and testing hypotheses.

Design Question 3: What will I do to help students effectively interact with new knowledge?

Teaching With Technology Question: How can I use technology to help students record and represent knowledge?

Beginning Tip

Consider having students record their thoughts in digital reflective learning journals during instruction, group collaboration, or project work time using free note-taking software such as EverNote.

Emerging Tip

Consider having students design tutorials to represent their newly actualized knowledge using the screen recording feature on interactive whiteboard (IWB) software, or by using free screen capture tools such as Jing or ScreenChomp.

Innovating Tip

Have your students post their tutorials on a classroom blog or webpage to contribute to other students’ knowledge of the content. Encourage students to comment on these posts and provide feedback on each other’s learning products.

Stephanie Chang created this exercise browser to help teachers easily see the different types of problems we have in each exercise. Watch the video above to see how to use the tool, or check it out yourself at www.khanacademy.org/r/exercise-browser.

Watch out—the exercise browser is a bit buggy right now and works best in Chrome and Safari. But don’t worry, it will only get better with time.

Bio: Cynthia, a professor at Colorado Technical University, designed a doctoral degree program with a concentration in Emerging Media (EM). Her EM research spans Web tools for campus and online learning, educational game design, virtual worlds and simulation design (holodecks!) as well as social media, augmented reality, mobile technology, cloud computing, and the study of how people use Web technologies to develop, produce media and consume content.

A $25,000 Grand Prize Winner in the 2010 Federal Virtual World Challenge for her team's space simulation, The Mars Expedition Strategy Challenge, Cynthia is teaching her 35th class in Second Life as Lyr Lobo and uses skills that she developed while serving as a mentor for Peggy Sheehy's Ramapo Project.

OLYMPIA (February 6, 2013) — From scholarly research to video simulations for learning, educators across the country today will honor the important role of technology in K–12 education with Digital Learning Day.

Washington state will join in the celebration. State Superintendent Randy Dorn has been a long-time advocate for increased technology in schools. “Technology is a fundamental and necessary part of classroom life,” he said. “It’s not a treat. And it’s not just for some kids and not all. Technology is a basic building block of K–12 education today.”

Digital Learning Day recognizes that the shift to digital content for teaching and learning is now underway. To highlight that shift, a series of state and national events will occur to showcase technology integration programs in K–12 schools and districts.

As part of Washington state’s celebration of Digital Learning Day, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction is sharing a video that tells the story of the “iMiller iPad Integration Project,” in which all 500 students at Miller Junior High in Aberdeen were issued an iPad in 2011 for classroom use. The video takes a look at the inner workings of the program and shows how this portable learning technology is affecting the teachers and students who use the iPads every day. The iMiller project is a complex program that touches every element of instruction, assessment, administration, school infrastructure, policy and family engagement.

Miller Junior High Principal Mark Decker believes that empowerment is one of the important by-products of technology integration. “In our classrooms, students can develop the skills that really maximize what technology can support — research, collaboration, communication, analysis and creativity,” he said. “We see this as a strong foundation for college and career readiness.”

At the highest level, Decker and his teaching team are determined to close the achievement gap, boost the school’s on-time graduation rate and raise the level of academic performance school wide. The district and school leadership team see the program as a way to energize teaching and learning, and support the use of data to guide instruction. They want to put the limitless capacity of technology into the hands of creative, resourceful teachers and eager young scholars.

Dorn visited Miller Junior High on Digital Learning Day in 2012 and was able to see the launch of the iPad integration program. At a special school assembly, Dorn encouraged the staff and students to maximize the benefit of this user-friendly learning device.

When learning goes digital, Dorn said, the classroom opens up. “Kids can connect with the best and latest learning resources and build important tech skills. Teachers add a whole new set of tools and practices for instruction. Technology makes learning possible anytime, anywhere.”

Here are a few of our favorite resources from 2012. If you look these over, I’m sure you’ll find at least a couple of them to be interesting and useful! Click on each title to go to that resource at Curriki.

Why We Like It: Karen has always contributed a ton of resources. Most recently several free Kindle versions of books. With the increase in e-readers, this is a good collection of free options. Contributed By: Karen Fasimpaur

Why We Like It:Students will feel like they are playing while learning about concepts such as average speed, data collection, graphing, extrapolation and interpolation of data. Contributed By: Carol Hagen

Why We Like It: WikiPremed is a comprehensive, creative commons licensed MCAT course, notable in demonstrating a unified curriculum for teaching undergraduate science is a true treasure trove of learning materials and over 100 hours of course video. Contributed By: John Wetzel

Why We Like It: TED talks are known for being some of the most engaging, timely, and progressive presentations. This is amazing access to all of them–free! And there’s no fear of the content getting stale. There are new videos posted every week. Contributed By: Sandy Gade

Why We Like It: Modernize the teaching Othello through the use of news articles, non-fiction pieces, technology, and recent news events, aligned to the CCSSO. Contributed By: Sue Costagliola East Meadow School District

This presentation will give you an overview of our nano essay contest to "Un-Make a Bully"

Teachers please introduce to you class if you would like your class to participate. Elementary teachers could take some time in class to introduce the contest and 6-12 teachers could simply give students the link the the podcast page. The information in the slides is enough for anyone to understand and participate.

This podcast will show you how to fill out and print your K-5 Report card using Adobe Reader. If you need additional help in using the PDF portfolio file for report cards please collaborate with your team, your TRT, or another buiding expert. There are several links below the video as support for you to self help most problems (Ricoh printing, installing Reader, setting default PDF, report card link, and more)

This video explains how to use your school district Google account to set up calendaring and link to your iCal if you choose. Beyond this video you can find great tutorials on YouTube for Google calendar.

Some other links to help as you use Google Calendars:

If you use an iPhone here is what you need to do to get the calendars to work correctly on that device without syncing.

Mail Catch - http://mailcatch.com/en/disposable-email - Disposable email accounts, pick a name, yourname@mailcatch.com, now I can use this to do the confirmations and sign up for sites, but the drawback is that the mail is gone after 30 minutes. Work around to sign kids up for sites.

Simplebooklet - http://simplebooklet.com - Allows you to take resources and turn into a visual presentation material to present online, new way to present information.

Boolify - http://boolify.com - Kids don't know how to search, visual representation how to use boolean logic in my searches, helps them understand how to string together searches,

BridgeURL - http://bridgeurl.com/ - Simple way to share a number of URL's with groups, prodev, etc, nice tool to share links around.

WebListMe - http://weblist.me/ - Digital locker, one stop shop for research presentation, group documents together, pictures, etc. Ability to list resources so the student can focus on writing content from the research not the searching. You can also upload files to it. Very cool way to guide students to the right things without just googling.

OER Commons - http://www.oercommons.org/ - 32000+ open license resources, no copyright worry, searchable and refinable and can hone into the exact age I want. Great time saver.

PaperRater - http://www.paperrater.com/ - Free tool to read grammar, spelling, and proof reading, good tool to help with writing process, it will also do originality detection to see which parts were copied off the internet, even gives an approximate grade!

NeoK12 - http://www.neok12.com/ - Collection of educational content, video, breaks videos down into teachable subject areas, then you can view them, get that embed code to put into your moodle or other course.

Any Meeting - http://www.anymeeting.com/ - Free online web based meeting software, computer or telephone for audio, it is add based for the free.

Today's Meet - http://todaysmeet.com/ - Encourage the room to use the live stream to make comments, ask questions, and use that feedback to tailor your presentation, sharpen your points, and address audience needs.

Remind - http://remind101.com/ - A safe way for teachers to text message students and stay in touch with parents. Free.

Kid Blog - http://kidblog.org/home.php - Kidblog.org is designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with an individual blog.

Entri - http://entri.co - Entri is a free collaborative tool for writing and sharing documents. Say you are writing an article for your blog and you want to share with your readers before you publish it to get feedback and allow changes.

One Word - http://oneword.com - Simple. You’ll see one word at the top of the following screen. You have sixty seconds to write about it. Click go and the page will load with the cursor in place. Don’t think. Just write.

WeVideo - http://www.wevideo.com/ - WeVideo is an online platform for collaborative video production in the cloud. We connect your web editing and your mobile device camera - and we enable you to tell your stories together with your friends. Any browser works - don’t worry about installation, software downloads and updates - all your files and edits are safely stored and accessible online.

One of the hardest thing with using the iPad in the classroom is finding the time to go through all of the apps in the iTunes Store listed under the education banner. We have started to list some of the apps we've found under each of the Key Learning Areas.

This post will teach you the options for self management the SPAM mail that is currently filed in your IceWarp webmail’s SPAM folder. Following the attached handout will allow you the option of keeping your SPAM-labeled email separate and web-accessible only, or allow you to use your computer’s Mail application to filter the mail that you don’t want, but allow all the mail to be delivered to your computer for self-management.

If you need assistance you should submit a support ticket to your TRT for assistance.